


The Romcom Jobs

by samyazaz



Category: Leverage
Genre: 5+1 Things, Accidental Baby Acquisition, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Huddling For Warmth, Kissing, M/M, Meet-Cute, Multi, Online Dating, Romance, Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Parker, Hardison, and Eliot lived out romcom tropes for a con, and one time they found themselves in one for real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Romcom Jobs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_ragnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/gifts).



> A birthday present for the marvelous lady_ragnell. Happy, happy birthday, Nell! I hope your day is full of all good things. <3

1.

Parker hates the suburbs. Everything feels small, the buildings too short to be of any use, and yet somehow too broad and vast at the same time. The same houses stretch to the ends of every street, and the streets stretch to the edge of the horizon, and Parker feels like a rat caught in a maze. Exposed. Observed. She wants a nice air vent to climb into, the surety of walls around her and the knowledge that she can go wherever she want without being noticed, but no one builds houses with air vents. It's an oversight. It's practically criminal. 

"We'll find you a nice air vent once we're done, babe," Hardison says, smiling a broad, plastic smile as he pats her hand where she has it hooked through his elbow. They're playing newlyweds, just moved into their first home in this quiet little suburb that advertises itself as the height of the American Dream. They're at a neighborhood barbecue and everyone is talking about how perfect the weather is and how perfect their lawns are and how perfect their life is. 

Mrs. Rawlins down on Persimmon Avenue is having an affair with the gardener, three of the couples smiling manically around the picnic table have quietly filed for bankruptcy in the past six months, and Hardison spent approximately thirty seconds digging for dirt on these people before he pushed back from his keyboard, dragged his hands through his hair, and gave a low whistle. 

Parker hates the suburbs. Everything's fake. Even the jewelry is fake. At least in the city people are straightforward about their dishonesty. 

But Joseph Galbraith, a pillar of the community and founder of the Neighborhood Watch, has nearly driven their client's business into the ground with his embezzling, so this is where they need to be, playing newlyweds and new neighbors as they mingle their way through the barbecue, working their way ever closer to Mr. Galbraith. 

"Don't forget to smile, buttercup," Hardison says in an undertone as he leans in to press a kiss to her cheek. And it's fake just like everything else here is, it's all for show, but the warm press of his lips to her cheek steadies her all the same. 

Still, she thinks she deserves a little payback for that endearment. And if she doesn't get to have just a little bit of fun here, she thinks she's going to have to stab someone just to get it out of her system. So she smiles back at Hardison, bright and saccharine, and leans in to rub the tips of their noses together, and mutters, "Don't you worry, my darling little pretzel, I'm just having the _time_ of my _life._ " 

Hardison looks more amused by the endearment than horrified. Parker is clearly going to have to up her nickname game. But over his shoulder, Mrs. Rawlins is giving Parker a quizzical look as she asks, "You call him your pretzel?", a little wrinkle to her nose like Parker hasn't heard a dozen endearments at this barbecue that are all at least twice as ridiculous. 

Parker slides past Hardison, leaning in towards Mrs. Rawlins like she's going to tell a secret. She drops her voice to a stage whisper and says, " _Bendy_ ," with an exaggerated wink. 

Mrs. Rawlins goes pink, her mouth falling open, and Hardison has to drag Parker away to the other side of the yard as she giggles and snorts. Suddenly, this con is looking like a lot more fun than she'd anticipated. 

2\. 

"Someone's coming," Parker hisses over the coms, low and urgent. And Hardison's program is only halfway through unscrambling the right passcode for the office's locks. "Security guard at your nine o'clock." 

"Damn it, Hardison," Eliot growls, pressing in tight beside him like that's somehow going to shield them from being seen the minute that guard comes around the corner. "Can't your thing work faster?" 

"Faster? _Faster?_ " Hardison's voice climbs until it squeaks, the way it always does when people say _stupid, ridiculous things_ around him. "This is a nine digit passcode, man, do you know what that means? That's one _billion_ combinations, thank you very much. I'd like to see you build something that can unscramble it _faster._ " 

"We're going to be made," Eliot snarls, and he's got a hand fisted in the back of Hardison's collar, which is just uncalled for. Manhandling him is not going to get this code unscrambled any sooner. 

He can hear the footsteps now, and Parker's in his ear saying, "Guys, _abort_ , it's not worth your lives, we'll come back later with better recon--", and Eliot is growling a low rumble that Hardison can feel in the air, like the one time his Nan took all the kids to the zoo and the lion's roar made all the hair on Hardison's nape stand on end. This is like that, except that there's no fence between him and Eliot, and Eliot's dragging him close and Hardison thinks that he's going to die today, all because Eliot has severely misinformed ideas about the things that technology can and cannot do. 

Eliot drags him by the grip on his collar, shoves him back against the door. Hardison says, " _Ow_ ," because the doorknob and his tablet are both digging square into the middle of his back, but the noise is muffled against Eliot's mouth because Eliot's mouth is suddenly _on his_ and oh. Oh. _Oh._

Hardison flails a little bit, he is man enough to admit it. But the steps are getting closer, they'll be rounding the corner any second, and Parker has gone suspiciously silent on the coms, so all Hardison has is Eliot's fist in his collar and his mouth moving against his, and Eliot growling low and soft between them, "Damn it, Hardison, _kiss me_ ," and so Hardison does. Kiss him. To sell the con. 

He is a _great_ grifter, no matter what the others have said in the past. He grabs at Eliot's hair, a great big handful of it, and he opens his mouth against Eliot's and kisses him, kisses him hot and hard until Eliot's breath is shuddering between them. And it hasn't escaped his notice that Eliot put him up against the door, put himself between Hardison and the danger coming closer to them with every second. But, right, he's grifting, he has to sell it, so he puts that thought out of his mind and just focuses on the way Eliot is pressing into Hardison's mouth, aggressive, he is so aggressive, Hardison is more surprised than he really ought to be. And he is going to have beard burn by the time they're through, his mouth rubbed raw by the scratch of Eliot's stubble, and it's going to be _great_ , and-- 

Someone is clearing their throat, and it's not Eliot, because Eliot's mouth is far too busy to doing things like that. Hardison pulls back, or tries to pull back, but the door's behind him and Eliot is tenacious. He has to brace his hands on Eliot's shoulders and push, and that only gains him a fraction of an inch because Eliot is really really strong. They compromise, Hardison turning his face aside and Eliot deigning to kiss his neck instead of his mouth, with a little grumble against his skin so Hardison knows he's unhappy about it. Or so the security guard who's currently tapping his foot at them knows he's unhappy about it. Because this is a grift, right. Right. 

"Ex _cuse_ me, I am indisposed, if you don't mind," Hardison says, and Eliot bites him halfway through so his voice goes high and thin at the end. 

"You can't do that here," the guard says, one hand resting on his hip where there's the bulge of a concealed weapon beneath his coat. 

Eliot leaves a trail of bites down Hardison's neck. Hardison's knees are going to give out and he's going to fall and the guard is going to see that they're breaking in and then they'll both be dead. "Do we have a _problem?_ " he demands. Eliot is going tight against him and it's not the happy kind of tension, it's the sort that means he's coiling up and preparing for a fight, which is very not good. 

The guard blinks and then grins at him. It doesn't seem like a malicious sort, it just seems bright and pleased. "Nah. We've got no problem. Good for you, guys. I voted for equality in the last election. Just maybe move it somewhere else, will you? This is private property and we can't have people loitering about. Boss's rules, you know." 

Oh, bless his heart. "Sure thing, man. Just--" Eliot bites a bruise onto Hardison's collarbone and Hardison's voice goes unsteady and broken. "Just give me a second to, uh, dislodge him, huh?" 

"Sure thing. You've got five minutes before my rounds bring me back again. Just make sure you're gone by then and I never saw you, all right?" 

"Yeah. Definitely, yeah. Thank you." 

They don't move until the guard disappears around the far corner. Or, _Hardison_ doesn't move. Eliot's lips are very, very mobile against his collarbone and Hardison's breath is getting thinner by the second. 

When the guard's gone, Eliot stills and lifts his head. 

"What the hell was that, man?" Hardison asks, faint. 

"Is the program done or not?" Eliot demands, gruff. 

Right. Hardison clears his throat, pride his back off of the doorknob and turns. "It's done. Let's go." 

They slip inside, and as they make their way through the halls, Parker says in their coms, "Don't kill that one, Eliot. He was good." 

Eliot grumbles, but eventually agrees, "Yeah, yeah. I won't kill him if he doesn't make me. Can we get back to the job now?" 

They get back to the job, but Hardison's lips sting, a reminder of the kiss for the rest of the day. 

3\. 

"Which of the four elements are you most drawn to?" Hardison asks, and Eliot may very well kill him. 

"What sort of a stupid quiz is this?" he demands, slapping his knife down on the cutting board where he's been julienning radishes. 

Hardison has the nerve to look affronted. He's lucky there's a counter between them. "This, I'll have you know, is a finely-tuned algorithm designed to analyze three-hundred and fifty-seven personality traits and determine your very best compatibility match from the pool of applicants. This is not a quiz, Eliot. This is science." 

"Okay," Eliot says. "What sort of stupid science is this? _Elements?_ I don't know, man, pick one for me if it means that much to you." He goes back to his chopping, and the knife thunks loudly against the cutting board with every slice. 

Hardison eyes him critically for a moment, then says, "Fire. Definitely fire." 

"Hey," Parker says happily as her computer chimes. "I've got a match." 

Eliot fears the idea of the sort of person a formula might think is the perfect match for someone like Parker. 

But almost as soon as she says it, Parker is frowning, the happiness on her face falling away. "Oh," she says, like she's just been let down terribly. "Hardison, your science is broken." She taps at the computer screen with a finger, like that's going to change the algorithm. "It matched me with Eliot." 

Eliot looks at Parker, who's looking back at him, blinking and startled. They look together at Hardison, who's staring at each of them in turn. "Huh," Hardison says. 

It's possible his science is wrong. Or it's possible that Eliot and Parker are secretly perfect for each other. 

Hardison is the smartest person Eliot knows. Eliot is pretty damn confident in his science. 

"Huh," Eliot says, and decides to turn his julienne into a fine dice. 

4\. 

The BioVerd corporate headquarters are across the street from a charming little diner that's a favorite lunch spot for BioVerd's employees. So while Hardison works finding the cracks in their security system, all three of them have had to resort to external surveillance and reconnaissance. Parker's playing an aspiring writer, to give her an excuse to linger all day at the table by the window without ordering anything more substantial than coffee and an occasional scone. Getting Eliot hired as a fry cook was a piece of cake, especially once their current fry cook came down with a severe and lamentable case of food poisoning. After that, it was a straightforward matter for Eliot to throw his opinion around a little and get Hardison hired on as well. 

"A busboy?" Hardison demands as his tray sloshes around with the half-drunk, watered-down remains of a morning's worth of orange juice glasses and coffee mugs. " _Really?_ " 

Eliot's voice, when it comes over the coms, sounds as though he's talking through gritted teeth. "Busboys are a valuable part of the food service industry team, Hardison. Everyone has to start at the bottom and work their way up the ranks, just the same as everyone else did before them." 

"Oh, really? Is that so? Tell me, how much time did you put in washing dishes before you worked your way up to a job with some actual damn responsibilities?" 

Eliot doesn't answer him, which is fine, because Hardison wasn't really looking for one. He grumbles and stomps his way through the dining room until he's neared Parker's table, and then he trips over nothing and goes sprawling right in front of Parker, tray and cups and orange juice and coffee spraying across the floor as he goes down hard, his face right in the mess. 

"Are you okay?" Parker asks as she slips from her seat to crouch with Hardison. She dabs his face dry with her napkin as she says in a rushed, low undertone, "The guard's rounds take him twenty-three minutes, give or take, to get here and leave and get back again, with variance depending on the time of day and how busy the office is." 

"Got it," Hardison answers, just as low. And then, louder as he pulls himself up off the floor and onto his knees, "Oh, thank you, you really don't have to do that, I'm so sorry." 

"Don't be silly," Parker says, short and clipped and she sounds like herself, even as she's dabbing gently at his brow with a wadded-up paper napkin. He is going to smell like coffee and orange juice for the rest of the day, he thinks mournfully. "I should have kept my things out of your way, I'm terribly sorry. Here, let me help you up. Can you sit for a minute? You took that fall hard, I expect you could use a second to catch your breath." 

"Well." Hardison lets her grab onto his arm, lets her push and prod him to the seat opposite hers. "I do have a break coming up. I suppose I could take it a little early. On account of the fall." 

"Great." Parker's smile is extra bright and extra cheerful, and now Hardison knows she's grifting. "I'm Alice." She holds her hand out for him to shake, and when he does, he takes the scrap of paper she'd tucked into her palm. "Can I buy you a cup of coffee, or a muffin?" 

"A muffin would be nice," Hardison says, and he doesn't even feel bad about her buying him breakfast, because it's not like either of them had to take a spill right onto their face for the con. 

He spends his whole break sitting at her table, pretending to get acquainted while she quietly gives him all the information she's picked up from her reconnaissance. It's nice just to get a minute off his feet. He is so not built for physical labor. This is why God invented computers, and desks, and office chairs. 

When his break's up, he has to go back to work, but he finds several opportunities throughout the rest of the day to linger by her table so she can tell him what else she's observed of the firm across the street, while sitting there tapping at Hardison's laptop's keyboard pretending like she's writing anything but gibberish. 

When Hardison's shift is over, he ducks into the staff room to take off his apron and get his things, and he's just ducking down to tie his shoelaces when he hears two of the waitresses pass by the staff room door, talking to one another: "Did you _see_ him with that customer? The regular who's always writing in the window and tips so well. He tripped over his own feet and went down right in front of her!" 

"No!" the other gasps. "Oh, the poor thing. Do you think she knows he's taken with her?" 

"How could she not? He was finding excuses to walk by her table all day." 

"You know writers, they're always off in their own heads. She never even notices me when I come refill her coffee, always staring out that window. Daydreaming, I suppose." 

"Mike's starting a betting pool. I've got twenty that he asks her out by the end of the week." 

Hardison straightens up slowly after the women have moved on again. "Do you hear that, babe?" he asks through the coms, grinning. "They're betting on us." 

"Ooh!" He can't see her from back here, but he still knows that she's bouncing and clapping in her seat, as excited as a kid at Christmas. "Tell Eliot to put in five hundred that Alice asks him out first." 

"He doesn't have to tell me anything, I'm right here," Eliot grumbles across the line. "Listening to you two make eyes at each other all day, might I add." 

"You can't hear someone's _eyes_ ," Parker says like it should be obvious. "Hardison, how do you think Alice would ask you out? Do you think she'd be shy about it?" 

"Alice is you, babe," he says as he slings his bag over his shoulder and makes his way out the employee entrance in the back. "You tell me." 

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Parker says. And despite the fact that Hardison feels gross and filthy from hauling other people's dirty dishes around all day, he can't even disagree with her. 

5\. 

The thing is, their mark runs a chain of daycare centers and he's been ripping off hundreds of hard-working parents who are already struggling to make ends meet. And really, the only way for them to have an excuse to hang around a daycare center is if they've got a kid there. A random adult wandering around without a kid in attendance would just attract suspicion. 

"We are not _stealing a baby_ ," Eliot growls when Hardison mentions this fact. "What is wrong with you?" 

"No, no, we're just borrowing a baby," Hardison says. 

Eliot still looks like he intends to kill him. 

"It's our client's," Parker adds helpfully. "And she gave permission and everything. We're just going to borrow the baby, drop him off at daycare, pick him up at the end of the day, and return him to mom. There's nothing to worry about, Eliot." 

Somehow this ends with Hardison and Eliot pulled over on the side of the freeway, trying to change the baby's diaper on a tailgate because traffic's backed up for miles and this was a diaper emergency that definitely could not wait until they'd crawled their way along the freeway to their client's house. 

"You're doing it wrong," Eliot says like it's a personal affront to everything he stands for, as Hardison tries to actually be _useful_ and get the baby in a clean diaper. "Oh my god just _stop_. Get out of the way." 

"I'd like to see you do better," Hardison huffs, and Eliot apparently takes that as an invitation because he shoulders Hardison aside and has the baby wrapped up in a new diaper and in his arms, cooing against his shoulder, in about six seconds. 

Hardison just stares at him. At both of them. "How do you even know how to do that?" he demands. 

Eliot rolls his eyes and pats the baby on the back while she chews on the seam of his shirt. "It's not _difficult_ , Hardison. Babies are just people." 

"Oh, sure. Tiny, wriggly, kick-y people. Nothing to it." There is no way anyone on the freeway looks inclined to let them squeeze their way back into the flow of traffic, so Hardison just boosts himself up onto the tailgate and watches through narrowed eyes as Eliot gently disengages the baby from his shirt and gives her a knuckle to chew on instead. 

"So," Hardison says, as the traffic on the freeway slows from a crawl to a dead stop. "What happens when she gets hungry?" 

+1. 

There is an honest-to-god blizzard outside. They barely managed to limp Lucille through the whiteout and into the parking lot of the nearest motel, and so Eliot thinks it's entirely reasonable that he wants to start punching things when the girl behind the reception counter regretfully says, "Oh, I'm sorry, we only have one room left for the night. It's a queen." She hesitates and glances between the three of them before she adds, "...Single." 

Parker looks mulish and Hardison looks slightly mad around the edges as he asks the receptionist to check again. Then begs her to check. Then slips a handful of hundreds across the counter and gives her some serious, desperate eye contact and asks, "Are you _sure?_ " 

The girl clears her throat and eyes the money uncertainly. "Sir, I'm sure. There's only one room left. I can't take that. Even if I did, I couldn't use it to make another room appear." She glances at the lobby windows, showing nothing but white outside, and chews on the corner of her mouth. "There's another motel about five miles up the road? They... they might have something more available." 

She doesn't sound confident about that at all. And even if she were -- there's no way they're making it another five hundred feet up the road, much less five miles. Not in these conditions. 

"We'll take it," Eliot says past the both of them, because it's not like they have much choice. "You two go get your things from the car," he tells them, and after a moment Hardison stops sputtering long enough for Parker to drag him off and do so. Eliot turns back to the girl at the counter, who looks harried and a little apprehensive. He gives her a smile, and because dealing with the three of them automatically means she's earned it, he makes it one of his charming ones. "Sorry about that. We've had a long drive, is all." 

She clears her throat and slides three keys across the counter to him. "I understand. Room 215." She nudges Hardison's stack of money towards him as well. 

"You guys can accept tips, right?" 

"I--" Her mouth works like a fish for a moment. "Well, yes, but--" 

"Good." He slides the money back to her. "That's for the room. Whatever's left, you can consider a tip." 

"I can't-- that's _far_ too much, I couldn't possibly--" 

"Trust me," Eliot says, with another smile and a wink, for the way it makes her flush and look pleased instead of traumatized. "You've earned it." He takes the keys and nods at her in farewell, then ventures back out into the snowstorm to see how the other two are faring. 

They've got all of the bags unloaded from Lucille and half of them in their arms, and Hardison is trying to figure out how to carry the other half at the same time without dropping everything on the ground. Eliot gives a sharp sigh as he reaches their side, says, "No, I told you to get _your_ bags. These are mine." And he takes his own up and tosses them right back into Lucille. 

Hardison drops his own bags from his arms and stares at Eliot. "What do you think you're doing?" He sounds so disapproving that Eliot half feels like there should be a "young man" tacked onto the end of the demand, and a finger wagged in his face. 

"Look, _somebody's_ going to have to sleep in Lucille," he says. There are alternatives, of course -- there's the floor, or a chair, or the bathtub if he's really desperate. But Eliot knows he's the odd man out here, and there is no way he's going to be able to bear sleeping in the same room as them while they get to curl up with one another. He can take a lot of punishment, but he can't take that. "She's got heat," he says, instead of saying any of the rest of it. "And I can stretch my legs out. It just makes sense for the two of you to be the ones to take the bed. It'd be a tight fit for you both back here." 

Hardison squawks a protest and Parker frowns at Eliot, quiet but making her displeasure known all the same. Eventually, she catches Hardison by the arm and pulls him off, along with their bags, and Eliot climbs into the back of Lucille and makes space for himself amongst Hardison's equipment. 

It's not bad, as sleeping arrangements go. The cold from the blizzard outside seeps up through the floorboard, but the rest of the van is all right. And he doesn't have blankets or a pillow to curl up with like Hardison and Parker do, but you spend enough nights sleeping on rocks in the Afghani desert and that changes your definition of _luxury_ real quick. He's had worse nights of sleep. He'll be just fine, if only he can _get_ to sleep. 

When Lucille's back doors are thrown open, admitting a gust of frigid wind and a small flurry of snow, Eliot snaps, " _Damn_ it, Hardison, I was just getting to sleep," even though it's not true at all. 

Hardison doesn't even apologize, just bundles inside Lucille, and Parker climbs up after him, wrapped up in what looks like a dozen blankets, only her face peeking out, a dusting of snow on her eyelashes. "It's empty in there," she says, matter-of-fact like that explains anything. Like it's not a lie, because Hardison was there with her, so how could it have been empty? 

"They've got their wifi behind a paywall, the Philistines," Hardison says, and that makes even less sense, because they were supposed to be _sleeping_. 

"There isn't room for all of us back here," Eliot grumbles. 

"We'll make room," Parker says, and shrugs off her blankets and bundles him up in three of them. The blankets get piled high and Parker and Hardison wriggle in on either side of him, and it's very close quarters, he's got Parker curled in against his front and Hardison plastered against his back, warm as a fire, and there's nowhere for Parker's arms to go but around him and nothing for Hardison to do with his knees but to slot them in behind Eliot's and suddenly Eliot is very, very warm. 

"You're my perfect match," Parker says. 

Hardison says, "You kissed me," like it means something. Like he knows what it means, even though Eliot's been avoiding figuring that out for months now. 

"We are not letting you sleep alone," Parker says, and her words are heavy with finality. 

They're wrapped all around him like they have no intention of letting him move anywhere until morning. And there's a blizzard outside anyway, and with the both of them there suddenly Lucille feels cozy and warm and inviting. And Eliot is tired, he's so tired. Eliot closes his eyes and doesn't think about how easy it is for the unmatched cadence of their breathing to lull him to sleep when it had been so elusive only moments ago. 

"You do realize we just paid several hundred dollars for a crappy hotel room we're not even using," he murmurs. 

Hardison drapes an arm over his side, crossed over Parker's. Eliot can hear Parker's grin more than he sees it. "Worth it," she says, and burrows close. And moments later, Eliot's asleep between the two of them.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] The Romcom Jobs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5669809) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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